


The Old Blood (Up Through the Floor Again)

by XriotfallingX



Series: Longer and Louder (Long After You're Gone) [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Big Gay Mobsters, Brief Underage, Humor, M/M, Mercenaries, Snark, Violence, yay tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 00:00:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XriotfallingX/pseuds/XriotfallingX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how Cruz met Avery, how Avery met Cruz, and how several other things happened. (A series of firsts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Old Blood (Up Through the Floor Again)

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, has it really been a whole month since I last posted? So sorry! I swear I meant to get this out quicker, but it’s been one hell of a month. So um, enjoy?
> 
> Title and lyrics from Minnesota, by The Mountain Goats.

__

_just the old blood_  
 _rising up through the wooden floor again_  
 _just the old love_  
 _asking for more again_

 

* * *

 

Chicago, 2002

One of the first couple jobs Cruz takes in America has him in Chicago, hired by some mobster to take out an annoyance, nice and clean. He doesn't know much more than that, doesn't really want to, even the one job has him feeling itchy. You get close to the mob, and you get sucked in, everyone knows that.

So he's lying in wait in Antonio Fabbri's condo when the man returns, an hour later than expected. Fabbri is dragging a boy (can't be more than fifteen), his wrists tied behind his back and his shaggy black hair hanging in his face.

He throws the kid into a chair, and starts hurling questions at him, things like "who do you work for," and "where did you get this," the whole time waving a small black address book in the boy's face. The kid just laughs, wild and fearless, and Fabbri starts taking swings at him. He keeps laughing, spits blood into the man's face when his lip busts and keeps laughing.

Cruz has to admire the fucking balls on this kid, but he's just going to get killed at this point and Cruz does actually have a heart. He's working out how to take Fabbri out cleanly before he bashes the boy's brain in, when the kid stops laughing and _moves_.

His hands are still tied, but that doesn't stop him from forcing Fabbri to the ground with just his momentum alone. They both land hard on the wooden floor, and the kid gets his knees lodged in Fabbri's shoulders and bashes his head into the man's face until he stops struggling.

Cruz is frozen, completely shocked for maybe the first time in two years, since the clusterfuck in Morocco (which is not a useful line of thinking).

The boy kneels there for a moment, panting, blood dripping from his head though its impossible to tell how much, if any, is his. He shoves himself to his feet in one quick lurch and then stumbles into the kitchen, moving right past Cruz's hiding spot on the way to the knife set, and Cruz catches a flash of wide blue eyes in a blood stained face through the slanted pantry door. Once the kid has wiggled up onto the counter enough to grab a steak knife and cut himself free, a hilarious thing to watch, he leaves in a hurry, taking the knife and the mystery book with him.

Cruz doesn't emerge from his hiding spot to check the man until the boy is well gone. Fabbri is dead, face smashed in and unrecognizable. He leaves, calls the guy who hired him (something Moretti) to tell him the job is done, but doesn't accept any money. For whatever reason, he doesn't say anything about the vicious black haired boy. It's later, of course, that he finds out the boy works for him.

 

* * *

 

2005

By the time he's seventeen, Avery walks in and out of the Sartini-Moretti building with no trouble at all. The man at the front desk calls him 'Mr. Merlo', Anthony Sartini's six year old shows him her drawings in the elevator, and the guard on the fifth floor just nods at him.

Avery knocks on the door of the big office at the end of the hall, unmarked box tucked safely under his arm. He's carried enough packages around in the last four years to identify them by weight and feel, and this one holds some kind of handgun.

Its only a couple seconds before Marcello calls him in, deep voice carrying easily. Avery pushes the door open, still whistling the stupid pop song he's had stuck in his head all day, to find Marcello and a man he's never seen before, standing stiff by the window in the corner.

"What did I tell you about bringing top forty into my office?" Marcello asks, sitting behind his desk with his arms crossed and the tiniest hint of a smile on his face. He doesn't make any move to introduce or even acknowledge the mystery man in the corner, so Avery decides to pretend he's not even there. (Unless he makes some sudden move, then there's gonna be problems.)

"To not to?" Avery replies, grinning, "and if I may point out, you recognized the song."

Marcello sighs heavily and says, "let's not discuss that. I believe you have something for me?"

"I do. Picked up, dropped off, guaranteed in like new condition." Avery says, and steps further into the office so he can set the box down on the wide desk. "Though, I had hoped I was past this," he adds with a fake pout.

"Angel," Marcello says, lightly admonishing even as he smiles. (After all, being a trigger man is no protection against also being an errand boy.)

Avery grins wide and holds his hands up in easy surrender. Its all a game really, how far can he toe the line. "Anything else, Boss?"

"That'll be all for now, thank you Angel Face." Marcello says, hands folding on top of the unmarked box and clearly not planning on doing anything else until the boy leaves.

Avery nods once, turns to glance at the blond man in the corner (olive skin, probably mid-twenty's). The man's attention is fully devoted to the box, until suddenly its not, and his hard gaze flicks up to Avery, impossibly green. Avery's breath catches dead in his chest, and it's not a reaction he's used to or has any idea what to do with, so he turns and leaves.

 

* * *

 

The first time they're actually introduced (as Angel Merlo and Alexander Gore, though Cruz is pretty sure they both know the names are fake) isn't for another six months, in Marcello's office again, staring each other down from opposite ends of the room.

"You two might consider working together," Marcello is saying, snapping his briefcase closed and standing from his desk. At the less than friendly look Cruz shoots at Avery, and Avery returns in kind, he adds "or not. Just get it taken care of." He gives them both a hard look, and they take the cue to leave.

Standing in the hallway, Cruz stares down at Avery, a little bulkier than he remembers, hair a little shaggier, but just as short, and his eyes are just as fucking blue. Cruz glares, because those damn eyes are disarming, and says "stay out of my way."

Avery snorts in indignation, and leaves the building without replying.

Fifteen minutes ago, Avery had burst into Marcello's office, ranting in loud, angry Italian. Cruz, standing by the edge of the desk, had watched with wide eyes, while Marcello just let out a small sigh (Cruz figures Avery gets away with this shit because he's like everyone's little brother).

Thirty minutes ago, some hired thug had apparently tried to gun Avery down in broad daylight. Cruz can only imagine it didn’t go well for the man.

 

* * *

 

Down on the street ten minutes later, Avery spins around and snaps "stop following me." Cruz is less than six feet behind him, bastard isn't even trying.

 _"I'm not,"_  Cruz says, in Spanish, smirking like he doesn't think Avery will understand him.

 _"You've been following me for sixteen blocks, don't pull that shit,"_ Avery snaps back, his Spanish smooth and confident (though he's been told it makes his accent outrageously southern).

Gore actually smiles, the first real emotion Avery has ever seen on his face, even if it's a mean smile. "I just don't want you to embarrass yourself."

“I don’t need your fucking help,” Avery bristles, though he knows it makes him look all of seventeen, and he hates looking his age

“I’m not the one with a hit on my head,” Cruz says, looking amused under all the tan and grumpy.

“Go to hell,” Avery snaps, and stomps off (doesn't even care how it looks at this point).

As expected, they don't even try to work together, and things get horribly out of hand.

 

* * *

 

Cruz never intends to stick his hand down Avery's pants, but they've spent the last hour arguing about who’s fault it is that the wannabe hit men got away, and what the next move should be.

It turns out, naturally, that Avery argues like he fights, with lots of movement and fire in his eyes, and Cruz is seconds away from shooting Avery in the face, or breaking his neck, or _something_. Something to get the kid out of his space, loud and unpredictable and crazy in ways that Cruz finds entirely too fascinating (doesn't want to deal with). He takes a deep breath, tells himself that Avery may be a punk kid, but he's also a Made Man, and then reminds himself that he doesn't have a death wish.

"And another thing," Avery is still going off, even though Cruz mostly stopped listening once the kid started lapsing into Italian. He pauses for breath, licking his dry lips, and Cruz just snaps. He gets both hands on Avery's thin shoulders and shoves him against a wall, sticks a hand down the boy’s pants and grabs his dick through his boxers before he even knows what's he's doing.

Avery squawks in outrage, but then he's got his fingers dug into Cruz's hair, and he's pressing up against him, biting at his shoulder.

It doesn't really help solve anything, but they don't kill each other, so Cruz counts it as a win. (He wears Avery's teeth marks on his shoulder for a week, counts that as a win too.)

 

* * *

 

2006

Avery runs into Cruz randomly a year later, in Joey Baldini's restaurant. He's in the kitchen, picking up a clean gun from one of the cooks, and when he walks out the run-in is almost literal. Cruz takes a quick step to the right, and Avery jerks back to the left, and they stare at each other for a second.

"Slow your roll, Tonka Truck," Avery says, smirking. His first couple thoughts are all horribly paranoid, but Cruz looks just as surprised to see him (it's in the set of his shoulders, Avery thinks).

"What." Cruz says blankly.

Instead of explaining himself and his weird phrase, Avery says "for someone who doesn't want to get looped in, this may not be the best restaurant of choice."

"What." Cruz says again, face just as blank (slightest hint of his eyebrow twitching, like maybe he honestly had no idea it's mafia joint).

The restaurant chooses that moment to explode in gunfire.

Then Avery has his hand shoved down Cruz's pants, looking for a bullet wound, trying to determine if he'll have to play amateur surgeon in the back room.

"This is not how I saw my day going," Avery mutters to himself, fingers already slippery with blood. He's supposed to be killing someone up on the north end in two hours, but that's shot to hell. He'll have to spend the rest of the day laying low and stalking the police radio now. "Seriously, you ruined my day," he adds, looking up at Cruz's face.

 _"Shut the fuck up,"_ Cruz growls, eyes even brighter than usual and his face slightly flushed, the only sign that he's been _shot_. Avery growls wordlessly back at him, pokes him a little harder.

 

* * *

 

So Cruz is in the back of a restaurant and he's got Avery's hand shoved down in his pants, prodding none too gently at the bullet graze on his thigh. He honestly hadn't even known Baldini's was a mob hangout (a stupid, stupid mistake, no matter how delicious the lasagna had been).

This isn't at all how he saw his day going either. He had just wanted to sell a couple guns he got overseas, not get involved in a full blown shoot out. Even if the gun fight is technically in the front room.

"You'll live," Avery mutters and finally stops jabbing him in the wound.

Cruz just scoffs, because he _knows_ , and then grabs Avery's gun out of his holster, barely hanging out of the kid's baggy jacket. (And seriously, what punk kid has a military issue shoulder holster and a Colt Rail pistol?) Before Avery can start to bitch, Cruz takes a shot over his shoulder, at the thug who had been creeping around the corner with his gun trained on the back of Avery's shaggy head.

Avery looks from the fallen man back to Cruz and demands "did you just save my life? You asshole!" He grabs the knife out of Cruz's boot and hurls it right into the face of the next guy trying to come through the door with a growl that implies he's imagining the man is a certain Spanish mercenary. Panicked shouting starts from the main room, and Avery turns his glare back to Cruz as he says, "I hate that!"

Cruz considers a sarcastic reply, but he honestly doesn't know where to start with Avery, and he can hear sirens in the distance, so he settles for sneering, " _maybe we should get the fuck out already."_  Avery makes a face and mutters something under his breath (it sounds unfriendly, but it is in German, so Cruz can't be sure).

“I think you may be officially caught up in our shit,” Avery says as they duck out the back door, into the alley, sirens wailing closer.

 _“Fuck this,”_  Cruz says, and disappears for another year.

 

* * *

 

2007

Avery finds out that Cruz is in town by complete accident. He just happens to asks where one of his favorite gun dealers got an old colt, and Mac throws out the name 'Gore.' Avery knows that name, knows the flashing eyes and mean smirk attached to it.

Lunden hacks into the street cameras to help track him down (while judging his life decisions loudly), and Avery decides to follow him around the city. It starts as a joke mostly, but after several hours Avery is still at it, just to see how long it'll be before Cruz notices.

He's in the stairwell of a parking garage, watching Cruz walk towards the POS he calls a car with the stiff shoulders and swift determination that scream of frustration. Avery has just finished deciding that fuck this, its time for dinner, when he spots someone else in the building. Its a woman, nearly hidden in the shadowy far corner, wrapped in a huge black coat. She's staring right at Cruz, phone in her hand (thumb held over the call button.)

Avery doesn't even have time to think about it before he's sprinting across the garage to save Cruz from a car bomb. By tackling him.

They both hit the ground seconds before the car explodes, and it sends them tumbling back against the guard wall, shards of metal and pieces of rubble flying around them. Avery's head collides with the cement wall with a loud crack, and he groans as his vision instantly starts to swim.

 _"What the fuck was that?"_  Cruz snaps, shoving himself to his knees and looking around the garage. He has little pieces of concrete in his hair and ash smeared across his face (it's distracting).

"I know you're not stupid," Avery says, staring at the ground because it spins less. "Is the lady gone? East corner, black jacket."

Cruz gets to his feet and pulls his gun, creeps around the car until he can see past the smoke. "Gone," he growls, and then turns back to Avery, "who was she? What are you doing here?"

"We should go," Avery says, because its a busy part of the city and someone is sure to call the cops soon. When he tries to push himself to his hands and knees though, his vision whites out for a second and he gets punched with a wave of nausea.

"What are you doing?" Cruz demands, stomping over to where Avery is huddled on the ground.

"I'm gonna throw up. Head trauma. Your fault, don't be a dick." Avery says between deep breaths, trying to get his eyes to clear.

 _"Fuck's sake,"_  Cruz growls and throws Avery over his shoulder in a fireman's carry.

"Let the record show," Avery says, voice slurring, trying not to throw up on Cruz (who would definitely drop him), "I totally saved you."

"Totally," Cruz mocks.

Next thing he knows Avery is waking up in his own apartment with a throbbing head and Lunden's paler than usual face staring at him.

 

* * *

 

2008

"Are we done here?" Avery asks impatiently, tucking his gun away and kicking Jessup's body one more time for good measure, "or did you want to roll around in the blood bath a bit? Pick up some decorating tips? Maybe steal a head so you can finally have a friend?"

Cruz laughs, suddenly, one sharp bark that startles them both. Cruz can't remember the last time he actually laughed, and the look on Avery's face clearly says the boy never expected him to, much less in a dank underground train tunnel.

"Whoa," Avery says (smile breaking across his face), "it's almost like you're a real person."

_"You're comparing me to a serial killer."_

"I am, yeah."

"Funny," Cruz says, and then adds "fuck off," (can't force any heat into it), and shoves Avery over, right into a pool of blood.

"Oh wow, DNA heaven. Thanks." Avery says, voice dry as ash, and Cruz laughs again. It feels almost weird, laughing, but it makes Avery smile and his eyes dance even though he's sitting in a huge puddle of who knows how many people's blood, soaking into his pants and up his sleeves. It's a good look for him.

 

* * *

 

Elgin, 2007

"That son of a bitch!" Avery shouts and throws a bottle across the room, smashing a lamp.

 _"What?"_  Cruz asks blandly, watching Avery stomp back and forth across the floor. Avery honestly can't even care that Cruz is in his apartment again, head too full of plans on how exactly he'll kill Mac (slowly, painfully).

Avery just growls wordlessly, too frustrated to voice it, and slams his phone closed before throwing it into the mirror above the mantle, shards of glass scattering on the tile below. He doesn't feel any better, so he grabs the other poor lamp and hurls it into a wall before kicking over the end table it had been sitting on, which cracks loudly and splinters when it hits the ground.

 _"Do you want to tell me what's bothering you or would you like to break some more furniture?"_  Cruz mutters, and it sounds like he's talking to himself, but Avery spins around to stare at him.

"Did you just quote Next Generation at me?" He asks, awed, and Cruz's eyes widen just the slightest bit. Avery is laughing before he's even aware of it, and Cruz is glaring at him, but he can't stop (it's possible he's a little hysterical).

 _"I'm leaving,"_  Cruz grumbles and sulks out.

Avery is still laughing long after he's gone.

 

* * *

 

Las Vegas, 2012

In a swanky hotel room, Avery is trying to wiggle out of his grip, but Cruz isn't letting go. He’s kissing Avery over and over and over again, paying no mind to the blood that covers the man (because Avery is twenty four now, not much of a punk kid at all anymore).

“We need to get out of here,” Avery says in the spaces when their lips aren’t connected. Cruz just keeps kissing him, runs his fingers through Avery’s wild hair, taste of copper on his tongue. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I’ve made a bit of a mess here, we need to get some new clothes and get the fuck out.”

“Right now?” Cruz asks skeptically, shooting a glance at the clock on the nightstand. The minutes are covered by blood splatter, but he can still tell that it's three something in the morning.

"There's always a flight out of Vegas," Avery says with a smile that's entirely too bright and carefree for someone who just tore another human being apart. Cruz is enthralled. "Are you coming with me or what?"

"Yes," Cruz says, and his tone makes Avery pause, really look up at Cruz with those damn eyes of his. _"Always,"_  Cruz promises, " _I'm with you."_  (He doesn't make promises lightly.)

 

* * *

 

Chicago, 2010

Avery figures, if he lets himself into Cruz’s place, the worst that’ll happen is Cruz will try to kill him a little bit until he realizes it’s Avery, and then he’ll return to his default setting of pissed at everything. It turns out he’s wrong, what actually happens is he gets three steps into the apartment, Cruz pops out of nowhere, stares right at him, and then punches him in the face anyway.

Avery is half expecting it, but it still knocks him back against the wall of the narrow hallway. “Holy shit,” he says, grabbing his busted lip and laughing sharply.

 _“Why the fuck are you here?”_  Cruz demands, his hands still curled into fists, eyes a little wide, like maybe he has no idea what to do.

“Shit balls,” Avery says, pulling his fingers away and licking his lip (bloody, already swollen), “last time I try to do you a favor, FuckAss.”

_“What.”_

Avery rolls his eyes with a sigh, pushing away from the wall and standing up straight, and Cruz takes a step back. So it’s like that, Avery thinks to himself, and offers up his olive branch, “the cops are on the lookout for you for that last job you pulled. You know, the thing with tear gas. Nice. I just came to say you should skip town for a while.”

“How do you know all that?” Cruz asks, and he looks more freaked out, instead of less. Great.

"I don't know if you've heard," Avery says, grinning wide, "but I'm kind of a big deal now."

"I heard," Cruz bites out, face settling into a glare rather than startled blankness.

"Why so aggro, Amigo?" Avery asks, wildly amused with himself. Cruz is apparently not amused, because he pulls a gun. “Wow, not in a good mood today,” Avery mutters, smile dimming significantly, pulling out his own gun, though he keeps it trained on the floor. (He’s more surprised than he should be, which is just, so stupid.)

 _“I don’t like mobsters!”_  Cruz snaps, “I do not need a fucking Capo in my house, you have no fucking right to be here."

"And here I thought I had earned some credit, helping you with your little Russian problem, taking out a serial killer together," Avery says, throwing his arms in the air as safely as he can while holding a loaded firearm, "but fine, fuck you, get picked up by the cops. I really don’t give a shit."

Cruz is silent for a long moment, before he points his gun at Avery's head instead of some vague threatening point on his anatomy, and asks “are you lying about this?” His eyes are hard, and it's obvious from his tone that this is the end of the conversation, one way or another.

“Never,” Avery replies, his smile gone and his eyes dead serious, “I haven’t and I won’t. If you know anything about me, let it be that.” He flicks the safety of his gun on and holds it out like an offering.

Cruz stares him down, doesn't move to take it. “So I’m to just trust you then?” He sneers.

Avery smiles again, slowly, the edges sharp (flashes his teeth), and promises “one day, Cruz, you will.”

 

* * *

 

_hot wind coming off the water_  
 _the sky gone crazy with stars_  
 _while we stay here we imagine we're alive_  
 _we see shadows on the walls_

**Author's Note:**

> Giant thanks to KanarandTarkaleanTea for awesome reviews on previous parts of this monster, and also tons of thanks to you kind people who left me kudos.
> 
> Please excuse any silly mistakes, still don't have a beta for this thing.


End file.
